Reassign All Records to Another User in Dynamics

One of the most underutilized features in Dynamics CRM is the ability to reassign all records to another user. This can be particularly useful if your company continuously brings new users onboard, users leave the company, or has consultants constantly working on your CRM. If you ever have users leave the company, and their account is disabled, you may find that some things are not working as expected anymore – especially if that person worked on any Workflows or Business Rules.

The overall process to reassign records is usually straight forward, but it can get more complicated when the user owns any Workflows or Business Rules.

To method for reassigning all records to another user depends on your version of Dynamics. For this blog, I’ll assume you’re on Dynamics 365.

To begin, navigate to the Systems > Security in the main Dynamics navigation

Once the Security window has opened, click on Users.

When the list of Dynamics Users has displayed, change the View as necessary to find the user whose records you wish to reassign. For the purpose of this blog, change the View to All Project Members.

Select the user you wish to reassign the records for. Double-click on the user record to open it.

Once the User profile loads, look for the Reassign Records button in the command bar ribbon. Note: If you don’t see the Reassign Records in the command bar ribbon, click to access the additional buttons.

The Reassign Records popup widow will allow you to assign the user’s records to yourself, or select another user in Dynamics.

If you are the new Owner of the records, click the checkbox next to Assign to me and click OK.

To assign the records to a different user, click the Assign to another user or team, look up another user in the Look Up Record window, and click OK.

Normally, this process will reassign every record belonging to the original user (in this case Sven) to the new user (Alan). Where you can run into problems is if the original user is the Owner of any Workflows or Business Rules.

When you attempt to reassign all records, you may encounter an error similar to the below:

If you click Download Log File and open the text file, the error message should read similar to the below:

If you encounter this error message (<Message>Published workflow definition must have non null activation id.</Message>), then you need to manually deactivate, reassign, and reactivate any Workflows or Business Rules that are assigned to the original user. The best way to find any workflows or business rules that are assigned to the original user is to use the advanced find shown below.

Note: Replace the Owner with the user that you need to get reassigned.

Once you have run the above Advanced Find, it will return a list of any Workflows or Business Rules assigned to the original user. You need to deactivate everything prior to reassigning them to a new user. Don’t forget to reactivate the Workflows and Business Rules after reassignment.

Once you have reassigned any Workflows or Business Rules, try using the Reassign Records button in the User Profile again. This should now reassign all records without encountering any errors.